Friday, February 28, 2014

Israel warns Lebanon to halt Hezbollah’s threats

Israeli soldiers stand atop an armored personnel carrier (APC)
positioned near the Lebanese border, close to the northern Israeli town
of Shlomi February 27, 2014. (Reuters)

By Staff writer
| Al Arabiya News
Friday, 28 February 2014

Israel warned Lebanon on Friday to quash threats emanating from
Hezbollah, after its air force raided a site belonging to the Lebanese
Shiite group.

On Wednesday, Hezbollah threatened that it will
respond to Israel’s Monday night air strike near the Syrian border that
killed two of its members.

Israel has neither confirmed nor
denied carrying out the strike, in keeping with its silence on at least
three such attacks over the past year targeting suspected
Hezbollah-bound convoys of advanced weapons from civil war-torn Syria.

In an unusually forthright public statement about the incident,
Hezbollah said on Wednesday it would “choose the time and place and the
proper way to respond” against Israel, with which it fought a war in
south Lebanon in 2006, Agence France-Presse reported.

Israel
has frequently promised to target Lebanon at large in any new conflict,
noting that Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed Shiite Muslim militia, had
politicians in the Beirut government.

“It is self-evident that
we see Lebanon as responsible for any attack on Israel from the
territory of Lebanon,” Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz
said on Friday.

“It is the duty of the Lebanese government to
prevent any terrorist attack - whether a terrorist or missile attack, or
any other kind - on the State of Israel,” he told Israel Radio.
Israel is technically at war with Lebanon and Syria.

Israeli analysts have been mostly dismissive of Hezbollah’s threat this
week, arguing that its fighters were too busy helping Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad battle a three-year-old rebellion to open up a new front
with Israel.

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